On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 10:11 PM Ocean Power <oceanpo...@protonmail.com>
wrote:
> What about Australian indigenous songs that trace the path of songlines
> that both document collective history and folk knowledge and also
> rhythmically document land contours and other landmarks as a
> map/timeline/travel guide and often compile folkloric and secondary and
> primary knowledge over generations? I'm curious if you think these function
> in some ways as tertiary sources which, at least according to the wiki,
> include "travel guides, field guides, and almanacs." I'm out of my depth
> but enjoying the back and forth here.
>
Hello :) Sounds like a tertiary source to me, whatever the format. I
would say instructional, historical, and cataloging stories + songs are
traditional tertiary sources. As are the maintainers of legal precedent
and local data records.
There are also a few independent dimensions where oral and written
histories tend to differ, which are sometimes confused. Three at play here:
* *Format*: Seen (video) vs. Spoken (audio) vs. written (text).
Video or audio are sometimes considered more authentic than text for a
primary source.
* *Verifiability*: Contemporaneously recorded in a lasting medium, vs.
remembered + retransmitted through the memory of recipients
* *Closeness to observation*: Primary observation / Secondary analysis /
Tertiary compilation
A town elder remembering the town's history is primary; when I develop
my own history based on it (w/o direct experience) and tell it to you, that
is secondary; if you catalog different versions of town histories in an
epic song, that's tertiary (even as your performance of it is a primary
source for your singing style!)
S.
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